Creating Universes with SAP

BusinessObjects







Taha M. Mahmoud








Chapter No 1
"Introduction to BI and the Semantic Layer"
In this package, you will find:
The authors biography
A preview chapter from the book, Chapter no.1 "Introduction to BI and the Semantic
Layer"
A synopsis of the books content
Information on where to buy this book









About the Author
Taha M. Mahmoud (PMP, TOGAF, ITIL, and CSM) is a senior BI consultant, BI
project manager, and a solution architect. He has more than 7 years of experience
working on, consulting for, and deploying successful business objects' projects in the
banking and telecom industries.
I would like to thank my mother and father for raising me and
helping me to be different. I love you and will always do. I would also
like to thank my wife, Rasha, for supporting me during the period of
writing this bookthere is always a woman behind every great man.
Special thanks to my son, Ali, daughter, Ruqayyah, and my family
and friends.


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Creating Universes with SAP
BusinessObjects
This year (2014) was an amazing year for German football fans as their national team
won the World Cup 2014 title. A few days later, I received a subscription e-mail from
SAP with the title How SAP helped Germany win the World Cup. It was very interesting
for me to know how. As SAP is one of the leading IT companies in the world, it was not
clear to me how IT can help a sports team or even a football team to win a title or a
medal. You can have a look at the e-mail body in the following screenshot:
So it is all about Business Intelligence (BI). Now, we can see BI participating in almost
every single aspect of our life, even in sports. SAP used the Big Data concept to handle
vast amount of data, SAP HANA to assure optimum response time, and SAP BO BI 4.x
to make data available to the right users in the right format (reports, dashboards, and
analysis), as we can see in the previous example. The results were amazing, Germany
won the World Cup title with the aid of BI. This era is not the "hard work one", but rather
it is the "intelligent work one".
SAP BO BI 4.x is a complete BI solution with many tools bundled together to satisfy
different needs of BI. One important tool is Information Design Tool, which is used to
create and build the BO semantic layer (Universe). Universe is an intermediate layer
between database and BI tools that will transform database entities and joins into
business objects stored in the Business layer. These business objects can be consumed
later on by different BO reporting solutions.
In this book, we will learn how to create a Universe from scratch. We will cover all
related topics in detail along with step-by-step hands-on and real examples. We will
discuss design best practices, the Universe development life cycle, Universe testing,
security, and the multiuser development environment.
Congratulations on taking a step toward learning how to create a Universe using SAP BO
BI 4.x! Are you ready? Let's go
What This Book Covers
Chapter 1, Introduction to BI and the Semantic Layer, introduces Business Intelligence
(BI), BI concepts, and Information Design Tool (IDT).
Chapter 2, Aligning BI Solutions with Business Demands, explains how to download the
Northwind MS Access database and configure it in order to use it in the remaining
chapters of this book. We will also discuss the business case for Northwind and will
explain its data model.



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Chapter 3, Creating Our First Universe, facilitates a quick walkthrough that will guide
you to build your first Universe from start to finish. We will talk about the main building
blocks for any Universe and we will start creating a project, connection, as well as the
Data Foundation and Business layers; then we will publish this Universe. We will
continue building and enriching this Universe in the remaining chapters of this book.
Chapter 4, Creating the Data Foundation Layer, introduces us to our core chapter
that will cover in detail all you need to know about data connection and Data
Foundation resources.
Chapter 5, Creating the Business Layer, covers in detail all that you need to know about
the Business layer. Here, you can also find many best practices on how to deal with
business requirements.
Chapter 6, Testing Your Universe, discusses the Universe development life cycle, how to
use the Check Integrity wizard to complete the System Integration Test (SIT) for the
Universe, and how to use the Queries tab in the Business layer resource to complete the
User Acceptance Test (UAT).
Chapter 7, The Data Foundation Layer Advanced Topics, covers advanced design
topics that we need to take care of during the Data Foundation design phase. We will
start with design concepts, then we will cover Data Foundation advanced techniques
that we will use to enhance our Data Foundation design. Finally, we will talk about
SQL design traps and how to fix and avoid them.
Chapter 8, The Business Layer Advanced Topics, discusses Business layer topics such
as list of values (LOV), navigation paths (hierarchies), index awareness, aggregate
awareness, and Business layer's BO advanced functions (@functions).
Chapter 9, Data Security and Profiles, covers the important topic of security in detail.
We will start with differentiating between the two main types of security profiles (Data
Security Profile and Business Security Profile). We will learn how to use the Security
Editor to create security rules and how to assign them. Finally, we will talk about security
implementation best practices and how to create the security matrix.
Chapter 10, A Multiuser Development Environment, explains how designers can
work more efficiently in teams and how to use Information Design Tool in the
multiuser development environment using the synchronization wizard to synchronize
local and shared projects. It also explains how to migrate and upgrade a Universe
among BO environments.


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Introduction to BI and
the Semantic Layer
Before getting started with SAP Business Object Universe, you need to rst
understand what Business Intelligence (BI) is and how SAP Business Objects (SAP
BO) Universe ts in. It is very important to know the terms and language used in the
BI world, and this is the aim of this chapter.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
What Business Intelligence is and how it helps organizations and decision
makers make the best use of the information they have
The important terms and concepts that everyone working in the BI eld
should be aware of
The BI reporting architecture models, starting with the basic and simple
single-tier model until we reach the most matured three-tier model
Dening the semantic layer, and describing its functionality and main role in
the BI reporting model
Introduction to the SAP BO Universe, which represents the semantic layer in
SAP BO's reporting solution, and Information Design Tool, which is mainly
used to create and publish Universes
What is Business Intelligence?
Business Intelligence (BI) is a complex term to describe. It is not a tool or a theory
but a combination of methodologies, concepts, and technologies that enable you to
get business value of raw data by transforming it into a format that can be used to do
the required analysis and make decisions based on past trends.


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Introduction to BI and the Semantic Layer
[ 8 ]
To make it simple, let's start with a small example that illustrates the difference
between using BI and not using it. We all know and play card games. Let's imagine
that we have two players. Player number one is the smart BI guy, and player number
two is the lazy, old-fashioned player. The old-fashioned player just plays cards based
on his gut feeling, without trying to think or make use of the cards already played in
the previous turns. He's actually not sure what the right card to play now is, or what
cards he should play later on and in which sequence to win. He doesn't have the
right tools and information to make his decision.
He is compared to the BI player who spends his time tracking all the cards played in
the previous rounds. Then, he will try to predict and forecast the remaining cards for
each player. He also spends time tracking the behavior of other players, their actions,
and their impressions. This will help him predict their succeeding moves. He will
start classifying the other players into categories such as a risky player who will rush
to play his valuable cards in the early rounds, while other players will prefer to keep
their valuable cards up to the end. The BI player simply uses historical information
(past) to know what card to play now (current), and in the long run, he will build a
strategy and vision on what cards he shall play in his upcoming turns to nally win
the game.
Let's have a deeper look at our example to be able to dene BI. BI means to extract
historical information and then analyze it to help us decide what we shall do in
the current situation and explore opportunities. In the long run, it will help build
a strategy and vision by predicting and forecasting for the future.
Business Intelligence concepts
In this section, we will try to explain some of the most important BI concepts
that you need to be familiar with. Before we start creating Universes, we need to
make sure that we are talking the same language. The concepts, terms, and
language used here are generic BI terminologies, and they are not related to
specic BI reporting tools.
We will start with a knowledge pyramid that describes how data evolves from
information to knowledge and nally, to wisdom. This is important because BI
focuses on achieving knowledge and wisdom.
We will then talk about the difference between hindsight, insight, and foresight.
After that, we will go through a fast overview of a data warehouse (DWH) and
how it is related to BI.


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Chapter 1
[ 9 ]
The knowledge pyramid
The knowledge pyramid is also known as the data, information, knowledge,
and wisdom model. Here is an example that describes each stage of the
knowledge pyramid:
Data: This consists of scattered discrete facts that you can't understand alone,
because they are not in a context. The following facts are an example of data:
[is 200 Temperature C].
These facts cannot be understood in the current order and format. This is
because they are discrete, scattered, and without a context. This means that
data alone is not useful and somehow needs to evolve to the other levels in
the knowledge pyramid in order to gain some extra value.
Information: This consists of some discrete facts (data) evolved by
putting them in a context. Context is a specic order of facts that will
help us understand them and gain information. Let's check out the
following example:
[Temperature is 200 C].
Now, we start having a context after reordering the discrete facts presented
in the previous data example. We know that 200 is a number representing
the temperature of something and that it is measured in Celsius.
Knowledge: This can be achieved by adding more context to the information.
Let's check out the following example:
[Car engine temperature is 200 C].
[Car engine normal temperature is between 100 and 150].
Now, you have more information grouped together in a context, and you
know that your car engine's temperature is above the normal temperature.
You might take an action, but you still need some more information to be
able to take the right decision at the right time.
Wisdom: We will reach wisdom when we increase the context level by
adding more knowledge and information together in the right order
that can help us gain information and take actions. Let's check out the
following example:
[Car engine temperature is 200 C].
[Car engine normal temperature is between 100 and 150].
[Car engine temperature red zone starts from 200 C].
[You need to stop your car if engine temperature reaches the
red zone].


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Introduction to BI and the Semantic Layer
[ 10 ]
Now, you can take a precise action based on the data, information, knowledge,
and wisdom you have, and you will stop your car and go to check your engine.
This is because you realized that your car temperature is higher than normal,
and it is in the red (dangerous) zone.
The different stages of the knowledge pyramid are shown in the following diagram:
Now, after you have learned the knowledge pyramid, we need to nd out what
the relation between the pyramid and BI is. BI will evolve as data evolves. BI starts
with raw data that will evolve into information after presenting it in a format that is
suitable for analysis. Information will evolve to knowledge after doing the proper
analysis on the information. Historical information and current knowledge will
evolve and lead to future wisdom. It will help us take the right action in the current
situation and make the right decisions in the future.
More information on the knowledge pyramid is available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIKW_Pyramid.


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Chapter 1
[ 11 ]
Hindsight, insight, and foresight
You will hear these three words, hindsight, insight, and foresight, many times if you
work in BI eld. They are strongly connected with BI because they simply describe
what BI is. We've already explored these concepts in the What is Business Intelligence?
section; now, we're going to discuss them in more detail:
Hindsight: This refers to focusing on the past and history. We learn from our
past to avoid making the same mistakes and to explore new opportunities
that we didn't catch.
Insight: This refers to the balance and start point for both hindsight and
foresight. The action that we will take now will be history in a few moments
and will shape our future. We can have a better present by learning from our
history, and this will lead to a better future.
Foresight: This refers to what we expect in future, that is, how we will
predict what will happen based on what has already happened.
BI is a mix of hindsight, insight, and foresight. As they are somehow related and
connected, the main target of BI is to learn from our hindsight to take the right
decision in our insight to have a better foresight.
For more information, you can refer to http://www.
learnthelessons.com/Ponderables/sights.htm.
BI and DWH
The data warehouse (DWH) is a central big repository to hold extracted data from
multiple source systems across the organization. This is an important thing to think
about before starting any BI initiative in your organization. The DWH will act as a
single source for your BI reporting, and you will be able to integrate your isolated
source systems and make your information available to top management and
decision makers.


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Introduction to BI and the Semantic Layer
[ 12 ]
In the following diagram, you can see the data ow, which starts from source
systems and ends at knowledge and wisdom, delivered to BI users in many formats:
DWH comes with many other concepts, which are given as follows:
Data Quality (DQ): This focuses on enhancing the quality of the data
extracted from source systems to get more accurate information and build
more valuable knowledge. Also, it takes care of enhancing source systems'
user interfaces by doing the required data validation to make sure that the
proper data is being entered and stored.
Master Data Management (MDM): This will focus on unifying the data
to get the most accurate records. For example, let's take a customer's
information. You might have a customer's mobile number and address stored
in more than one system, but you know that a specic system contains the
most accurate phone number of the customer, because it is used to perform
transactions through calls. So, you will consider this system to get the most
accurate phone number for your clients and other customer information such
as address and name. This will help us get the most accurate and unied
record for the customer from across our organization's source systems and
also get what we call the customer golden record.


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Chapter 1
[ 13 ]
Metadata: Imagine that you have many source systems in your organization
that you need to consider for data extraction. In some organizations, DWH
contains thousands of tables and hundreds of thousands of columns and
billions of records. For example, banking and telecommunication industries.
For such huge DWH, you need to track what kind of information you have,
where this information is stored, and how to access it. Metadata is data about
data, and it will help you answer all questions raised earlier.
Data Governance: This is your DWH police. It will govern DWH by
controlling the data ow between DWH and source systems. It will help
unify business rules and criteria across the organization. Finally, it will
control the process as well. Data Governance is the big umbrella that holds
everything that we talked about in this section.
Besides data governance, there are many other types of governance that can run
in your organization, such as IT governance, enterprise governance, and BI
governance. In the following diagram, you can see just an example of multiple
levels of governance:
DWH will act like the single point of truth, as everyone is accessing the same
information that is stored in the same location with the same business logic and
rules applied.


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Introduction to BI and the Semantic Layer
[ 14 ]
As you can see, there is a strong relation between BI and DWH as both of them
complement each other. BI needs DWH to achieve its goals, and DWH needs BI
to avail its data and make it utilized.
For more information on data warehouse and BI, you can visit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_warehouse and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_intelligence.
BI reporting tools architecture
To achieve BI, we need tools. Some tools will be used to extract and transform data
(ETL tools: extract, transform, and load) which is out of the scope of our book. We
also need reporting tools to display the information and help us perform a proper
analysis of the information that we have, to achieve the required knowledge and
wisdom. Also, we might need some other tools to help us in data mining and
forecasting. Here, we will concentrate on BI reporting tools as it is the entrance
point to our main title. In this section, we will talk about the generic BI reporting
tools architecture, and then, we will give special attention to SAP Business Objects.
The BI reporting architecture model evolved as BI evolved. It started as a one-tier
model, client applications, that can access the data les directly. It then evolved
into a two-tier model, by adding a database-server tier. The main purpose of
the database-server tier is to enhance the security model for the previous model
by isolating data access from the client tools. However, in this model, the client
application will perform all the calculation and data processing before displaying the
nal results to the end user. This is why we call the client application in this model
the thick client, as it will require high-standard hardware on the client machines.
Later on, the BI reporting architecture model evolved to the three-tier or multitier
model, which is the most common architecture used nowadays. In this model, we
added one extra business or BI tier to act as an intermediate layer between the client
application and database-server tier. This layer will enhance the overall end user
experience, because it will perform data calculation and processing after getting the
data from the database server and before sending it to the client application. This is
why we call the client in this model a thin client, because it will be used just to draw
and display the results for the end user.


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Chapter 1
[ 15 ]
The following diagram displays the one-tier, two-tier, and three-tier models:
In the following sections, we will discuss the BI reporting architecture models
in more detail.
The one-tier architecture model
In the one-tier architecture model, you have only one client application that connects
directly to the data les. There is no authentication, and the user can modify, update,
or even delete the master data les because he or she has complete access to data.
The main characteristics of this model are:
We don't have a server, and we have only a client application
All calculations and processing are done by the client
The data is not secured, as the end user can access it directly using the
client tools
You can't operate an efcient multiple user environment
It is a cheap and simple solution
The example tools are MS Excel, MS Access, and so on


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Introduction to BI and the Semantic Layer
[ 16 ]
The two-tier architecture model
In the two-tier architecture model, we have one extra tier, which is the database
tier, besides a client-side application. This is why we call this model a client-server
architecture model. To make it simple, let's just list the role of each component.
The database server is responsible for:
Receiving data queries from client applications
Communicating directly with the database and retrieving the required data
Sending it back to the client
The client-side application is responsible for:
Acting as an interface for the user
Sending user requests to the database server
Processing the data sent by the database server
The main characteristics of this model are:
It supports multiuser environment
It is more secured than the one-tier model
The client application is a thick client
A Java application (client) generates and submits SQL queries to the database server
(server). Then, this application will process the retrieved data to display the nal
output as an example of the two-tier model.
The three-tier architecture model
The three-tier architecture model is the same as the previous model, but we will add
one extra tier for business logic. This is also known as the application server, and
the main purpose of this tier is to process the information before submitting it to the
client application.
The main characteristics of this model are:
Data is more secured as end users don't have direct access to it
It supports multiuser environment
The semantic layer will isolate the physical layer from the Business layer
The application server will generate SQL queries using the semantic layer
and then submit them to the database


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Chapter 1
[ 17 ]
Data calculation and processing are done on the application server
Client applications are thin clients and just used to display information
We will not go deep into this as it is out of the scope of our book and is related to
server administration, but all that you should know for now is that SAP Business
Objects platform 4.x is a multitier model. We can see a simple representation of the
SAP BO 4 solution architecture in the following diagram. First, we have client tools
(rst tier) at the top of the graph. We have many client and reporting tools in SAP
BO 4, such as Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, and Dashboards. Then, we have
the application server (second tier) in the middle. We have many modules in the
application server, but our main concern here is the semantic layer, which will be
managed and maintained by the Information Design Tool. Finally, we have the third
tier represented in data sources and source systems at the bottom of the graph.


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Introduction to BI and the Semantic Layer
[ 18 ]
What is a semantic layer?
In this section, we will dene the semantic layer and then describe the main role of
semantic layers in BI reporting solutions.
The semantic layer acts like a translator. A translator is an expert in two languages at
least. During a conversation, he or she will listen to the rst person, understand what
they said, and then translate the same message into a language that the other person
can understand and vice versa.
The semantic layer does exactly the same thing. The end user can understand it and
communicate with it, because it talks the same business language. Then, the other
part translates the request into a technical language that can be submitted to the
database. After that, it does the opposite by receiving the data from the database in a
raw format and then translates it in a format that can be interpreted by the end user.
So, it is like a man with two faces. One face is the technical face (evil one), which
talks to the database, and the other one is the business user face (good one), which
talks to the business end users.
The main idea of the semantic layer is to translate and simplify complex technical
information in a way that business people can understand and utilize. The
information is stored in a database, and it requires many technical skills to access
it directly and do the required analysis. The semantic layer will isolate all technical
staff from the actual business information needed, and it provides an easy way to
understand and use a business model that can be accessed directly by the business
to do their own reports and on-the-y analysis.
The semantic layer will consist of two layers at least. The rst one is the physical
layer that will contain the technical part. In this layer, you will set up your data
model by adding the required tables/views and create the proper joins between
them. Usually, technical experts will be responsible for building this part as it
requires technical skills. The second layer is the business model, which will be
visible to the business users. This layer will contain attributes that business users
can understand. Every attribute will have its own mapping to the physical layer
either directly or it will be a driven attribute (calculated from other physical database
columns). This will hide and isolate the complex technical part behind the frontend
business model.
For more information on the semantic layer, you can visit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_layer.


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Chapter 1
[ 19 ]
Introduction to Universes and the
Information Design Tool
All reporting tools use semantic layers for the same purpose. However, they just
give it different names such as Framework in IBM Cognos, Project in Oracle BI,
and Universe in SAP Business Objects. All semantic layers have exactly the same
functionality: isolation of the technical part from the end business user by acting
like a translator. They will translate the business requests into technical SQL queries
submitted to the database. Also, they interpret the data returned into a format that
can be understood by the end user.
SAP BO introduced a new tool to create your Universe (SAP BO semantic layer) in SAP
BO 4.1; this is the Information Design Tool. They are still supporting the old Universe
designer tool for compatibility purposes, but they clearly mention that they will stop
supporting the Universe designer soon, and you will be able to create your Universes
using the Information Design Tool only.
Before we conclude this chapter, let's have a look at the main components
of Universe:
Connection: Every Universe should have at least one data connection. The
data connection will dene how Universe will access the data based on the
connection type. If you have an Oracle connection, for example, you will
need to dene your Oracle database and set your connection parameters.
We will talk about this in detail later on.
The Data Foundation layer: This is the physical layer in the Universe.
The Business layer: We dene our business model in this layer. We might
have more than one Business layer that shares the same Data Foundation.


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Introduction to BI and the Semantic Layer
[ 20 ]
History of SAP Business Objects
Business Objects is one of the leading companies in the BI and reporting eld. The
company was created in 1990 and nally taken over by SAP in 2007. There were
many products offered by Business Objects, but the most famous one is Business
Objects XI. The rst ofcial SAP release was SAP Business Objects XI3. The last
available version of SAP Business Objects is BO 4.x, and the framework was
completely changed in this version to comply with the Microsoft Ribbon technology.
The integration between Business Objects and other SAP products was dramatically
enhanced in this version, as shown in the following table:
Release name Number of the
service pack
Release date
BusinessObjects 3.x NA 1995
BusinessObjects 5 11 1999
BusinessObjects Enterprise 6.x 9 2003
BusinessObjects Enterprise XIR2 5 2005
SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI3 5 2008
SAP BusinessObjects BI4 NA 2011
Summary
This concludes our rst chapter. After reading this chapter, you should be able to
describe what BI is and how this will help your organization achieve its goals. Then,
we went through some of the most important aspects of BI such as the knowledge
pyramid and the difference between foresight, insight, and hindsight. We also had
an introduction to DWH and how BI can benet from it. We also had an overview of
the BI reporting tiers and how the BI architecture model evolved as BI evolved. Then,
we talked about the semantic layer as our entrance to Universe building. Finally, we
had a brief introduction to Universes and the Information Design Tool.
Now that we've been introduced to BI and SAP Business Objects Universe, in the
next chapter, we will talk about the data model for the Universe that we will build
together in the remaining chapters.


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